Paul Ryan was Wisconsin's sole GOP congressional member to have voted for the bailout/rescue/better-than-doing-nothing plan.
The rest of his Republican colleagues voted "no" - - cheap, easy phony votes that will please the faux free/failed-market outer fringes of their base - - but would have wrecked small businesses, homeowners, retirement accounts and public services from Ashland to Kenosha.
There's a time to be pragmatic, and a time to be an ideological goofball. Ryan chose pragmatism.
Wrong. Ryan tried to derail the first bill (140 billion less than the 2d- btw-) with a debilitating "insurance" proposal which would have crushed a lot of the banks who were supposed to be saved by the bill in the first place. It was showboating and Paulsen himself said it was an impractical idea. So lets not fall in love with Tom Delay's old pal (they hunted together if I recall correctly) just yet. Remember that 777 point stock market crash on Monday, because Republicans couldn't get the votes they promised? A cynic might suggest they just wanted the pork, but the alternate last minute plans from your "brainy" Republican- even though unworkable- surely did not help.
ReplyDelete